Intertrust won $440M from Microsoft, now accuses Apple of using its patented tech.

Intellectual property and DRM firm Intertrust Technologies has set its sights on Apple. The company has a new patent suit that targets the entirety of Apple's product line: iOS devices, Macs, Apple TVs, iTunes, iCloud, and even the App Store. Intertrust announced on Wednesday that it had filed suit against Apple in the Northern District of California for allegedly violating 15 of Intertrust's patents on security and "distributed trusted computing" (in other words, its DRM tech).

“Apple makes many great products that use Intertrust’s inventions,” Intertrust CEO Talal Shamoon said in a statement. “Our patents are foundational to modern Internet security and trusted computing and result from years of internal research and development. We are proud of our record of peaceful and constructive licensing with industry leaders. We find it regrettable that we are forced to seek Court assistance to resolve this matter.”

For those unfamiliar with Intertrust, it's not just another patent holding firm. As noted by the Wall Street Journal, both Sony and Royal Phillips Electronics hold stake in the company, and Intertrust claims to have made patent or software licensing deals with Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, Adobe, Samsung, Vodafone, HTC, and others. Most famously, however, Intertrust won a $440 million settlement from Microsoft in 2004.

It's too early to say whether Intertrust will succeed in getting a settlement or licensing deal out of Apple. Unlike some pure patent-holding companies, Intertrust says it hires engineers and develops "security-based products, trust services, and content distribution." Since Apple may well have patents related to some of those areas, it could hit back with a lawsuit of its own. Still, Intertrust seems to have a decent track record when it comes to squeezing money out of companies (whether it's Microsoft or others), so the company may keep pushing Apple in the hopes of winning another high-profile settlement.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

It looks like the MS case never went the full distance (from the Ars MS story link):

Quote:

InterTrust sued Microsoft, claiming that the Redmond, Washington based software giant infringed on their DRM technology. While the case had been tied up in litigation for some time, one significant preliminary ruling had gone in InterTrust's favor, causing Microsoft to reconsider its odds of prevailing. According to the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will license the disputed DRM technology, which will allow it to provide more copy protection technologies with its digital media products.

Wonder if Apple has will stick it out to the bitter judicial end? They definitely have the cash and chutzpah.

Would be good to get some analysis of the patent as part of the story, or perhaps a link to somewhere that does delve into whether this is a solid patent (1% chance) or just another vague software patent that should never have been granted (99% chance)...

Does Intertrust sell its own DRM product or just walks around asking money?

Because, backing from Sony/Phillips or not, if it looks like a troll, smells like a troll, and talks like a troll...You know, it must be a troll.

Talk all you want about hiring the best engineers around, doing research 24/7 and so on. If all you do in the end is submit patent requests and then sit on it until someone (successful) skirts on the technology, then you are a troll.

Umm... what DRM is used in the Mac or iPod lines? You don't have to license anything to use a Mac. And outside of the iPod touch which runs iOS, I can't see any DRM in the iPod's either.

Unless they mean iTunes and the music DRM, but that's not the hardware, that's that sole piece of software. I'm not aware of any other DRM that apple uses besides in iTunes. And even then they seem to have a record of trying to get rid of it.

It's software patents, which makes it pretty easy to know how to feel in my book. Software patents are stupid.

Software patents are stupid, but the companies with the power and money to lobby for change, won't do so if they aren't on the receiving end of patent lawsuits.

Software patents are not stupid. Some patents are stupid (and this does not apply only to software), but each one needs to be reviewed on a case by case. Reform is due to prevent that stupid patents don't make it throught the USPTO, but some software patents are innovative and require a huge investment to reseach and develop and should not be available to other comapnies to use them for free.

Are you a software developer or programmer? Just curious about the background of people who think Software Patents are a good thing.

Edit: Nevermind -- I looked up your profile. You are a software engineer. BTW, I am also a programmer and I have the opposite opinion of yours. I think software patents are stupid.

Why is there not some form of limitation on how long you can wait before filing a suit?

It seems to be ridiculous that you can wait years before taking action. It's as if these companies deliberately wait until the technology that they patent is used successfully so as to maximize their damages claim. I do realise that sometimes it can take a while before the alleged infringement is noticed but come on now, how long is long enough.

Software patents are not stupid. Some patents are stupid (and this does not apply only to software), but each one needs to be reviewed on a case by case. Reform is due to prevent that stupid patents don't make it throught the USPTO, but some software patents are innovative and require a huge investment to reseach and develop and should not be available to other comapnies to use them for free.

Are you a software developer or programmer? Just curious about the background of people who think Software Patents are a good thing.

Edit: Nevermind -- I looked up your profile. You are a software engineer. BTW, I am also a programmer and I have the opposite opinion of yours. I think software patents are stupid.

For the record, I agree with sviola and I work in a completely unrelated field (real estate).

Apple's been using DRM in their media since the iTunes store opened in 2003. Since then they dropped it for music, but still use it on video (since 2005) and ebooks (since 2010). Is there something that's different about the DRM Apple's using now than 10 years ago? For instance does this lawsuit only apply to ebooks? Or did this company wait until Apple had sold hundreds of millions of products that were all using their ip over the past 10 years before initiating a lawsuit? Is there some kind of statute of limitations on how long you can wait before you sue somebody?

Software patents are not stupid. Some patents are stupid (and this does not apply only to software), but each one needs to be reviewed on a case by case. Reform is due to prevent that stupid patents don't make it throught the USPTO, but some software patents are innovative and require a huge investment to reseach and develop and should not be available to other comapnies to use them for free.

The problem I have with software patents is that two people can come up with roughly similar ideas at different places and times, but the first person to file a patent on that idea "wins." Even if the second person developed his version of the idea completely independently of the first person, the first person can now stop the second person from capitalizing on his own work.

Patent laws on machines make sense, because machines can be taken apart and examined. Since the effort of duplicating the components of a machine is less than the initial cost of creating the design, machines are fairly easy to copy. This is what patent law was made to protect.

But reverse-engineering software is usually more difficult than just writing your own, and there have been very few truly new innovations in the software world over the last two decades: the windowing interface is possibly the biggest still.

Yes, there are some things, like psychoacoustic compression that are truly novel. But much of what's out there is NOT novel, but simply re-hashed implementations of ideas that have been around for years.

As a matter of fact, I developed a video compression technique during my college years that includes a technique used in the MPEG compression standard. The idea was to progressively enhance a static image by painting a large approximate area first with a low-resolution approximation of the scene, then filling in details as bandwidth allows. The fact that this is now part of the MPEG standard tells me that other people had the same idea, and that I'm not all that original.

I neither want nor expect anyone to pay me for something like that, since I never took my animation compression routines any further than a college classroom project.

In the end, there's very little in the software world that is truly new, and so I don't think patent protection is really appropriate for anything but really new ideas.

What's to stop people from "stealing" ideas? Fair pricing on licensing. Price a license at a point where it's cheaper to buy it than to re-invent a technology, and everyone wins. When a potential buyer is simply not aware of an existing product that does what he needs, it simply makes no sense to penalize him for inventing it himself.

The problem I have with software patents is that two people can come up with roughly similar ideas at different places and times, but the first person to file a patent on that idea "wins." Even if the second person developed his version of the idea completely independently of the first person, the first person can now stop the second person from capitalizing on his own work.

The problem with the current software patents is that they are patenting ideas, not implementations. If you could only patent the implementation then it wouldn't be a problem.

A perfect example is GIF. GIF is a specific implementation for storing an image, which didn't stop the community developing PNG to get around the patents.

However one-click shopping, plugins, electronic transmission of a document, are all ideas and should never have been allowed to be patented. These are what we should be fighting, not just software patents in general.

Apple's been using DRM in their media since the iTunes store opened in 2003. Since then they dropped it for music, but still use it on video (since 2005) and ebooks (since 2010). Is there something that's different about the DRM Apple's using now than 10 years ago? For instance does this lawsuit only apply to ebooks? Or did this company wait until Apple had sold hundreds of millions of products that were all using their ip over the past 10 years before initiating a lawsuit? Is there some kind of statute of limitations on how long you can wait before you sue somebody?

Sony actually had portable media products on the market before Apple did, so it's not unreasonable to think that Sony invented their DRM tech first.

Either way, I would assume that the statute of limitations would last longer than the patent itself, and IIRC, a patent is good for up to 30 years (2 terms of 15 years.)

However one-click shopping, plugins, electronic transmission of a document, are all ideas and should never have been allowed to be patented. These are what we should be fighting, not just software patents in general.

But many of the things that are patented are things that any competent software engineer could have come up with, given the time and the need.

For example, there's nothing novel in GIF compression. It's just one out of many ways of organizing data in an image. So there's no public interest in protecting the GIF standard as anything special.

For a patent to be valid, it has to do things no one has ever done before; the GIF standard certainly can't make that claim... neither can a lot of other patented things.

(I do agree with you about one-click checkout. This is high on my list of patent offenders. I can see no way that this is unique or deserving of patent protection.)

For example, there's nothing novel in GIF compression. It's just one out of many ways of organizing data in an image. So there's no public interest in protecting the GIF standard as anything special.

For a patent to be valid, it has to do things no one has ever done before; the GIF standard certainly can't make that claim... neither can a lot of other patented things.

(I do agree with you about one-click checkout. This is high on my list of patent offenders. I can see no way that this is unique or deserving of patent protection.)

Now, there might be something behind the scenes--in the server code, or the database storing/associating the info, or something like that--that is novel and merits patenting. And if that were what had been patented, that would be fine. But then someone else could implement a solution that, to the end user, gave the same experience--you press once, you're done--using completely different techniques to accomplish that. Which is as it should be. Just as a patent on a neon light shouldn't stop someone from inventing the fluorescent light--much less something using completely different technology like the LED.

I'll disagree with you on the GIF format, however. While the compression algorithm itself shouldn't be patentable, IMHO, the very specific case of using that particular compression algorithm in that particular way--including things like the order the pixels in the image are fed into the algorithm, the color spaces it supports, etc.--is probably (emphasis on "probably"--I don't know enough about the inner workings of image formats to be sure which ones--if any--should be considered "novel", and which ones are "obvious") a sufficiently novel combo of elements to merit a patent. But that patent should be irrelevant if one or more of those elements is changed.

(n.b.: I don't know whether the fluorescent light was in any meaningful sense "derivative" of the neon light in the actual invention process, or whether the former was an independent discovery of what happens to be very similar technology.)

Why is there not some form of limitation on how long you can wait before filing a suit?

It seems to be ridiculous that you can wait years before taking action. It's as if these companies deliberately wait until the technology that they patent is used successfully so as to maximize their damages claim. I do realise that sometimes it can take a while before the alleged infringement is noticed but come on now, how long is long enough.

You also have to consider that the company may have already contacted Apple regarding this matter, but has otherwise been shutdown, ignored, or maybe an agreement could not be reached. The article doesn't really go much into the backstory, and basically just announces that "Hey! They're going to court".